DOJ files in court criminal charges vs 2 Russians for P340-M cyber theft
Criminal charges have been filed in court against two Russians for reportedly hacking and stealing over P340 million worth of cryptocurrency from the system of their employer Coins.ph.
Charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) before the Taguig City regional trial court (RTC) were Vladimir Evgenevich Avdeev and Sergey Yaschuck with violations of Section 4 (a)(1) of Republic Act (RA) No. 10175, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
“It is the DOJ’s mandate to assure the Rule of Law is upheld at all times, and this extends even in cyberspace.” said DOJ Secretary Jesus Crispin C. Remulla in a statement.
Remulla said the charges were filed after a panel of prosecutors issued a resolution that declared that probable cause has been found to indict the two Russians for allegedly hacking and stealing 12.2-million XRP of cryptocurrency worth P340,745,027.93 from the systems of Coins.ph which is owned by BETUR, Inc.
The DOJ said the two accused were former consultants of Coins.ph, “an entity engaged in remittance, transmittal of money, foreign currency exchange and other money transactions.”
“Complainant Coins.ph’s security team concluded that the malicious actors must have had a comprehensive grasp of its network infrastructure, secure access to key protocols and server systems based from the recorded suspicious system logins,” said the DOJ.
“Further, the respondents tried to swap and transfer the stolen funds through identified cryptocurrency services to obfuscate the origin/destination of money in an attempt to confuse investigators once their scheme is busted,” it added.